Specter of More Fires Looms in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia–Fires related to agricultural management in Sumatra have largely abated after a massive, sudden spike last week, but the outbreak offers a hint of things to come as the Indonesian island enters the heart of the dry season.

Associated Press

Motorists ride through haze from fires in Pekanbaru, Riau province, in Indonesia on Aug. 27.

Hundreds of fires that environmental experts say are for purposes of clearing and preparing land for agricultural purposes cropped up last week on the island, with the majority in the province of Riau, the site of major blazes in June that sent haze-caused pollution soaring to record levels in nearby Singapore and Malaysia.

Riau is the center of the world’s largest palm oil industry, where increasing investment in the past decade has driven the industry’s expansion onto new lands. Burning land is illegal for commercial producers, but in a province where the laws are often murky and oversight minimal, and where even small players can enter the industry at relatively small expense, the fires are nonetheless an annual event.

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“Almost all of the fires are technically related to agricultural management, either for expansion or to prepare land for cultivation,” said Peter Holmgren, director general of the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research.

“It’s the profitability of oil palm that’s driving the changes” in the last 10 to 15 years, he said.

The fires last week weren’t as long-lasting as the blazes earlier this summer, but they sent pollution soaring to toxic levels in many cities of Riau, a wealthy province built on palm oil, oil and gas, and industrial pulpwood production.

Low visibility forced the main airport in capital Pekanbaru to close for several days, while schools sent home students and thousands of people reported respiratory and other pollution-related illnesses. As in June, many people wore face masks even inside offices in the capital. Days after the fires abated, pollution remained at dangerous levels in several towns.

Northwest winds early in the week carried much of the smoke up across Sumatra, shrouding the major city of Medan in haze. That left Singapore unaffected, while haze crept briefly into parts of Malaysia, pushing pollution levels to unhealthy levels in the country’s northwest.

Showers at the end of the week helped to extinguish the fires, which by some counts reached a one-day peak of almost 500 across Sumatra. But many of the fires are taking place on peatland, deep stores of carbon material where fires can smolder for weeks underground, reigniting quickly after rains.

The record pollution levels in neighboring countries in June added pressure on the Indonesian government to investigate the fires more than in years past. The Indonesian government has said it is investigating a number of companies for wrongdoing, but authorities have been tight-lipped on details of the cases.

Some environmental groups have pointed fingers at major agriculture companies operating in Sumatra by overlaying satellite-detected areas of fire with government maps of concession areas. The Indonesian government doesn’t make concession information available to the public, but various maps are in circulation among research institutions.

World Resources Institute, a Washington-based research organization, said late last week that more than a third of the fires occurred on lands of palm oil, timber and pulpwood producers—similar to during the June blazes.

“Furthermore, the fire alerts were more dispersed and in different locations compared with those of June and July, showing that this problem remains widespread throughout the region,” WRI wrote.

Further spikes in the dry season are likely as the dry season begins in force, WRI said.

“The typical behavior of farmers and others would be to clear trees and brush, wait until they have a had a week or two of really dry weather, and then set it alight to have a quick hot burn that clears the land fast and cheaply,” said Nigel Sizer, a director at WRI. “This would explain why the fires come in spikes and then often quickly subside.”

Eyes on the Forest, an environmental coalition in Riau, said that of more than 4,000 satellite-detected fire alerts in August, 41 percent occurred on pulpwood concessions and large-scale oil palm plantations. It also showed more than a quarter of all fires occurring on land that was natural forest just a year ago.

A new regional fire monitoring system remains a possibility for Indonesia and four other countries affected by the annual haze—Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Proposed in June, adoption has been postponed until a major meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in October.

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